HR Trend #2 -- Social Networking

CEO: "We need a social networking site in this company to enhance our CRM efforts and to enable knowledge sharing."

VP-HR: "A what?"

Last year, a friend of mine shared with me the fact that he was joining a new company that specialized in social networking in companies.

I had an idea of what he meant in theory. I thought I knew what Facebook, MySpace and the all the rest of these sites were all about.

That is, until I joined Facebook -- and I was amazed. Not only did was it interesting, and addictive, it actually fills an important business need that I have always had to stay in touch with a large number of people.

I discovered that it makes the effort easy, efficient and that it saves ALL sorts of time. It has not only come, it is bound to stay.

Now, what my friend said to me makes perfect sense. Facebook, and social networking sites are coming to companies near you. And the larger the company, the more it is needed, especially for those companies in the region that are geographically dispersed. Here is a link to the company he works for: SmallWorldlabs.com

For the HR professional, it is a good idea to get into the swing of things NOW, before the conversation listed above happens. In fact, it would be a good idea for HR professionals across the region to pioneer the idea and demonstrate some leadership in implementing a tool that will be taken as a requirement (I think) in just a few years time.

To folks on CaribHRForum -- this is a great application that we could use to deepen our current level of networking. People have often asked me for a list of contact information for people on CaribHRForum and it just does not exist. Their idea was that if they visited another country it would be great to arrange to have lunch with a member here and there.

Great idea! A tool like Facebook would be quite helpful to all of us, even if only a half were to use it.